What Are You Doing
Having done what I have done
Having done good or ill well or poorly
Having done until exhausted by time and circumstance
Now then what am I doing here after all
What am I doing
And what are you doing
Have you added up the days and hours
When the doing did nothing
When your absence would have made no difference
When what you seemed to be doing affected no one
Was turned inward or was trivial or irrelevant
Or a duplicate of a thousand days
Equally ineffective inconsequential
And only nightfall stopped the emptiness for sleep
So what are we doing here now and soon
Can it be explained to a sensible child
Imagine that child asking, "What are you doing here?"
Not "What do you do?" which permits
The great evasion a recital of occupation
That mask wrapped around a putative doing which
When removed reveals nothing nothing at all
Don't tell what your job is
Tell what you're doing with this precious life
And if you can not explain this to a child
Change your life
3/17-3/18/09
Copyright 2009 by Maurice Leiter
Posted with permission
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